Marketing to Women: Groupon Prez Disses Competitors

Matt Lauer interviewed Groupon president CEO Andrew Mason this morning about Groupon’s future and the reported $6 billion offer from Google. It seems that Andrew Mason had a strategy for dodging almost all of Matt Lauer’s questions because he tweeted “About to do TODAY show and beta test a new technique for dodging questions.” His joking, light-hearted attempt to evade questions certainly places more interest on Groupon’s position on some of the issues discussed. One of those is certainly the competition that exists for group selling sites.

One of the most interesting questions posed by Matt Lauer was about the copycats that exist for Groupon like Living Social. Mason lightly dismissed the other 499 as irrelevant, but Lauer rebutted with questions about what happens as the maturity of such sites causes them to begin to take less than the 50% cut they currently require.

Many businesses have had issues with the large amount of discount required, the overwhelming response to offers and high percentage rates charged by Groupon. The “deals” become colossal loss leaders, and as such, must be managed with a strategy for upselling or encouraging repeat business.

Most marketers are interested in the Groupon customer who is described as female, single, urban, aged 18-34, college educated and an income of $50,000-$100,000 per year.